HOW TO FIND BRANDS TO COLLABORATE WITH!

How to find brands to collaborate with! Social media Influencers are all the hype right now.. and we don’t see that changing any time soon. And that’s exactly why you’re here

Influencers are big everywhere! they’re all the rage. Brands want to collaborate with them in order to expand their reach to drive sales and conversions. So how do you find brands to promote and work with?

In this guide we’ll show you the best way to become an influencer and find brands to collaborate with!

With the increasing popularity of Influencer marketing, it only make sense that people are becoming more curious about how to become an Influencer and find brands to work with.

It’s not as easy as we’d all like it to be, building and retaining a hoard of devoted followers can be difficult.

It definitely requires consistency & some effort (which we will give you tips on later in this article).

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First, let’s take more of a look at the concept of influencers on social media:

Interpreting the Enigma of social media Influencers:

Simply put, successful influencers are social media personalities with a large, loyal and engaged follower-base.

Almost all successful influencers share a friendly rapport with their followers.

These followers or ‘fans’ often idolise their respective niche influencers, they regard them as strong role models, authority figures or experts and, in turn, will generally always follow their recommendations on products and influence purchase decisions.

With the accessibility of social media platforms, influencers are able to establish friendly rapports & personal connections with their fans.

Their lives aren’t enveloped in mystery like traditional celebrities, so they have the ability to connect.

With influencers revealing a glimpse of their personal lives they’re able to establish loyal bonds with their fan base. This is precisely what people want to see – the ‘real’ you!

The most important factor that differentiates Influencers from most high-profile celebrities is that the Influencers add their own unique voices to their content, they ascertain their authenticity which helps them earn the trust and loyalty of their follower-community.

How to easily find brands to collaborate with

There are many influencer platforms out there that are looking to collaborate with influencers by matching brands with creators, but the downside is most of these platforms only work with influencers that have huge followings.

If you don’t have a huge following and you’re looking to find brands to work with as an influencer then we recommend taking a look at Collabfluence

– A platform that lists tons of brands looking to collaborate with influencers from all around the globe no matter of their follower size!

It’s the best way to find brands to collaborate with.

With Collabfluence you’re able to search through the product categories that you’re interested in and checkout all the available products from brands looking to work with influencers!

Once you find a product you want to promote, reach out to the brand owners directly to get started! SIMPLE!

Benefits of Becoming an Influencer and how to find brands to collaborate with:

Brands have realized that in this day and age the importance of collaborating with influencers is high.

Influencer marketing is a strong advantage to any brand as it gives marketers direct access to an influencer’s devoted fan-base.

Not to mention, It also saves digital marketers the hassle of sourcing and targeting the right kind of audience for their product as the tedious task has already been completed by the influencer.

This is precisely why a whopping 86% of marketers used influencer marketing in 2017.

Influencers certainly have the power to persuade their followers. According to gen.video, the most effective and credible source of driving conversions and making sales are social media influencers.

Who wouldn’t enjoy having the ability to impact other people’s lives and influence their decisions?

Challenges Commonly Faced by Influencers:

Many people aspire to become social media influencers these days. It certainly seems like a lucrative career and life choice.

However, don’t be fooled, behind all of what looks like ‘glitz and glamour’ there lies a whole lot of patience, dedication and hard work.

Growing and retaining a loyal fan-base on social media isn’t a walk in the park and is actually becoming increasingly difficult as more & more people try to become influencers.

Earning the trust of your followers is a task employing great care and thoroughness.

It takes persistency on your part to ensure your content is authentic and will grab & hold the attention of your audience.

You also have to be very cautious as an influencer when linking with certain brands. Your followers become loyal due to the personal and honest approach to your unique content. Therefore, slamming them with sponsored posts can and will most-likely harm your reputation and disengage your followers.

Still want to live the life of an influencer? continue on for our tips on how to become an influencer and find brands to work with..

How to find brands to collaborate with:

The life of an influencer is envied by most.

As we have already mentioned, what we often forget is the constant effort Influencers have put in to live their life of luxury. It’s true as the saying goes “work hard, play harder!”.

You must put in the hours to reap the rewards.

Establish Your Niche:

If you want to become a successful influencer, you cannot expect to be a “Jack (or Jill) of all trades, master of none.” It is absolutely crucial that you identify a niche that aligns with you.

The easiest way to select your niche is to determine your strengths & weaknesses.Choose a niche that allows you to showcase your strengths and develop your skills further.

Deciding on a niche that accurately defines you will help you streamline an audience and enable you to tailor your content to suit their preferences also.

Generally, when you’re deciding on how to be an influencer, you can choose one of the following categories:

Bare in mind, you can combine two or more of these niches, you needn’t limit yourself to one but you must ensure the individual niches align with eachother too.

For example, you could combine Health and fitness with Lifestyle or Fashion with Beauty when you decide on your particular niche.

It is not imperative to your success that you to stick to these well-known niches. The key to becoming a successful influencer is adding your own uniqueness to everything you do and create.

Don’t be scared to experiment and create your own niche, that’ll allow you to showcase your strengths as well as your relatable and/or intriguing quirks.

Karina Garcia,a 24 year old, became a YouTube sensation over night just by uploading videos of slime. She has 8 million+ subscribers on YouTube who refer to her as the “Queen of Slime.”

Karina has gone on to publish two bestselling books and has now even launched her own brand named ‘Craft City’.

Garcia proves you don’t have to fit into a particular niche to be a successful Influencer.

Choose Your Platform:

You need to have a strong presence on the internet to be a successful Influencer but that doesn’t mean that you should use every single social media platform known to man.

Depending on your niche, one particular platform might be better suited for your content than others.

Say you are a fashion blogger, then Instagram would obviously work better for your visual content than other platforms like Linkedin or Twitter.

93% of social media influencers prefer Instagram because it delivers the best results.

However, that doesn’t mean that you have to focus your effort on Instagram if your niche doesn’t align with the platform.

You must also consider the platform that your target audience is more likely to use. For instance, if your audience includes a whole lot of millennials then you should definitely focus on Instagram and Snapchat.

If you want to use multiple platforms, just make sure you tailor your content to each platform.

Neil Patel, a digital marketing guru, is constantly using Twitter to promote his content.

This is the obvious choice considering most of his target audience (content creators,digital marketers & entreprenuers) are likely to visit this platfrom frequently for relavent content.

Neil Patel

While it is highly recommended that you select the platform that is most suited for your content and target audience, you also shouldn’t forget about other channels.

You should still acquire a basic knowledge of other distribution channels so that you can use them in the future if need be.

We’re firm believers in thinking it’s imperative to your success that you always remain one step ahead with a plan B at all times!

Calculate Your Content:

High-quality, on-brand content is obviously the most important answer to the question of how to become an influencer.

It is hugely important to post unique, current and authentic content that resonates with your audience keeping them engaged and interested in you as an Influencer.

In fact, this is the only way to keep you’ll retain your fan-base. Regardless of the type of content you create, it should be valuable and resonate to your followers.

Depending on your kind of niche and distribution channel/s, you have the option of different types of content such as:

– Photos

– Videos

– Blog posts

– Podcasts

It is so very important to add your unique signature to every piece of content created by you. This is precisely what will distinguish you from other people who are also trying to be influencers.

Example: Katie Stauffer, a photographer and lifestyle influencer, recieved huge recognition by posting videos of ‘Mila’, her 2-year old daughter, on Instagram.

What made her content different and more interesting from other similar Instagrams was Mila’s maturity and dialogue.

People are blown away with how smart and clever Mila is and because of it, today, Katie is followed by over 4 million+ Instagram users who just can’t wait for the next video featuring her daughter, Mila.

This highights how important it is that you find the unique quirk or trait that distinguishes you from the other influencers within your same niche.

Once you have identified your USP (unique selling proposition), then you’re able to incorporate it into your content as much as you can.

We suggest that you integrate your USP into your sponsored content as well.

Not only will this help your content stand out, but this will also establish your image.

Listen to Your Followers:

This is a sure way to ensure that your content is recognised, you must listen and create the content your followers want.

In order to get these relevant content ideas, you can simple fire a quick Google search for your niche.

Scroll to the bottom of the search results where you’ll find ‘long-tail keywords’ that are being used by your target following-base.

Not only do you have that option but you can search through other platforms such as Reddit and Quora to get an idea of what your target audience is currently raving about.

To make sure your content strikes a chord, you must have a very deep understanding of your target follower community.

Most social media platforms have an ‘analytics’ section that can give you insights into your target audience.

This enables access to demographic data such as geographic location, gender, likes, occupation and other online activity.

You should also pay very close attention to the comments section of your content posts. Here can lay an absolute goldmine of new content ideas that your audience wants to see.

Another idea is to conduct polls and outright ask your followers to tell you their preferences on your feed.

Keep in mind that it is important to never fear constructive For these people are important in aiding you in your journey of becoming a self-monetising successful Influencer.

Hashtag Game must be strong:

If you want to become an influencer and a successful one at that, the answer is to make smart use of the right hashtags.

An effective way of ensuring visibility to your content is by adding the appropriate hashtags to your social media posts.

This is the key for people who are only just starting as influencers and need to grow their audience.

Figure out the most relevant and currently trending hashtags in your particular niche, then add them to your posts to make sure your content is viewed by an entirely new audience that may relate but have been totally unaware that you exist.

Thankfully there are tools you can use like ‘HashtagsForLikes’. This platform enables you to identify current top content & hashtags in your niche, which you can use to boost your reach.

It helps simplify the process of hashtag targeting by making it a lot quicker and easier.

You should only use hashtags that align with your image as an influencer & relate to your particular niche. Be careful not to over-do your posts with unnecessary hashtags.

For example, Influencer Brian Kelly ( known as ‘The Points Guy’), makes effective use of hashtags in his posts, as shown in the screenshot below.

As well as using the best hashtags, you can also widen your reach further by creating your own unique hashtag.

You can then encourage your followers to upload their own content using your unique hashtags. This will popularize your hashtag and bring awareness to you in your audiences’ social networks.

Be consistent. Stay consistent:

Posting high-quality, on-brand content consistently is one of the most important and effective ways to retain the attention of your followers.

When you keep delivering good content regularly, it creates anticipation and builds the intrigue among your audience.

This will also boost engagement and increase your social media reach.

We suggest that you create a timeline for all of the content you plan on posting in the coming months.

Create a weekly or monthly series to keep your audience hooked and wanting more

For example, Nusair Yassin, (aka Nas Daily), promised her followers that she would upload a one minute video on Facebook every single day, for a thousand days.

This generated quite the intrigue among his followers who started keeping track of his page to see if he was keeping to his promise.

Nas did keep to his word, in turn garnering 12 million followers and positively affecting many lives all around the globe.

Be aware though, regularity is great but you should never compromise the quality of your content in an attempt in order to maintain it.

If you can’t deliver decent content on a particular date, just be sure you make a post communicating that.

Make sure your audience is aware that you are working on the content and it will be there soon.

If you are running out of good quality content, use the ‘Stories’ feature on Instagram and Facebook.

This will help keep your followers engaged and help you stay connected without having to spend hours perfecting content.

You can simply upload a picture or video of your work or living space to give your viewers a sneak peek into your day-to-day life.

Collaborations with other Influencers:

Collaborating with someone very well-known in your niche can be a great headstart.

When you’re just starting and still figuring out how to become an influencer this can be a super effective way to boost your audience as it gives you access to their fan base and gives you the opportunity to attract them to your profiles.

You have to be able to offer something to the other influencer in order for them to want to collaborate with you though.

These collaborations need not always be the ‘big’ influencers.

If the bigger Influencers do seem too far out of reach, you can always partner with micro-influencers who even though have a small fan base, can still be very active and engaged.

Create a Website:

Not many people will tell you the impact a website can have on you as an influencer.

If you ask for advice they’re likely going to talk to you about content strategies and platforms in the social media realm, however, anyone who is familiar with branding and marketing knows just how important a website can be!

As your follower-base grows, many people will want to Google search for you, so having a well-designed website that works well will add credibility to your image and help you obtain the trust and devotion of your target audience.

Having a blog section on your website will help further establish yourself in your niche.Thi will also expand your reach and improve organic traffic to your website.

Host Giveaways,’Ask me anythings’ (AMA) & Contests:

To become an influencer with a loyal follower-base, then you must keep them engaged.

One of the most easiest & effective ways to boost your engagement is to host an AMA on your social media platform of choice.

Not only does this keep your audience engaged but it also boosts your expertise in different subjects in your particular niche.

As your audience gets bigger and more people start tuning in to your content, they are also likely to start leaving feedback in the form of DMs (direct messages) and/or comments on specific posts.

Replying to every comment might seem a massive task. However, we strongly suggest that you make a point to respond to as many as you possibly can, you can automate this by using Quick-Replies.

A response from your side – be it even a quick emoji – can validate the loyalty that your fans have toward you and certainly makes them feel more connected with you.

The traveling duo of Bruised Passports creators, Savi and Vid, make a point to respond to comments on their IG posts.

This has helped them generate a following of 396,000+ devoted followers.

You can also do a shout-out for any exceptional positive feedback you receive.

This not only will make the sender feel rewarded and strengthen the faith they hace in you but it also proves to other followers how much of a positive influence you have in your niche.

The key to becoming a successful influencer is to value your followers just as much as they value you.

To sum up how to find brands to collaborate with:

It could take you months of hard work and patience before results start to show. Don’t be in a rush and have high expectations early.

The key is to find your uniqueness and create an interesting image for yourself as an influencer.

Use Influencer marketing companies like CollabFluence to find brands to work with on Instagram

Identify your niche and choose a platform/distribution channel that best fits you.

Anyone who has an idea of how to become an influencer will tell you the importance of creating genuine content that fits your own uniqueness and appeals to your followers, this couldn’t be any more true.

Ensure you maintain a personal connection with your audience.

Then and only then will you be able to build an engaged & loyal fan base that will trust your recommendations.

If you have any other suggestions on how to become an influencer then please share your thoughts with us in the ‘comments’ section below.